Rupert Murdoch’s iPad Folly The Daily Folds

Buried inside that News Corp press release is the announcement that its little-read and even less talked about The Daily has formally failed. The iPad-only paper launched by Rupert Murdoch with much fanfare in February 2011 and then made many layoffs this summer claiming the firings would make the “business stronger”. Nope. The Daily will publish its last iPad issue on December 15th. While dozens may lose their jobs, I’m sure it will ease their pain that The Daily’s founding Editor-In-Chief Jesse Angelo is getting a promotion thanks to cronyism. Angelo is a longtime Murdoch family friend and James Murdoch pal and now will become publisher of the New York Post. Angelo also is the son of John Angelo of NYC hedge fund Angelo Gordon & Co, which was one of Tribune Co’s biggest creditors. (Little wonder there’s speculation that Murdoch might buy the Los Angeles Times.)

In a memo to staff today, The Daily’s Angelo and Greg Clayman ridiculously boasted that despite “great original reporting, excellent design, and custom interactivity… unfortunately we have not been able to build a big enough audience fast enough to make our business model work.” (Great reporting? They posted a photo of me that was somebody else.) Rupert himself laughingly claimed The Daily was “a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term.” Now the only question is whether Richard Johnson will be let out of the witness protection program? UPDATE: “I’ll now be working for the New York Post, and will again have some readers,” Johnson answered me. Asked if he’s staying in LA or moving back to NY, Johnson replied, “I’ll be in LA for at least several more months. I think it depends if I can be of value here.”

4 Comments

Jeff Prescott • on Dec 3, 2012 6:57 am

The Daily was ahead of it’s time….I got on board at the beginning, but didn’t renew my subscription because it wasn’t quite what I thought it could be…and the sports results, etc was hard to work…..and it wasn’t updated enough during the day……but some of the visuals were great…
In ????? years, The Daily (or reasonable facesimile((sp?)) thereof), will make it………

Maybe the problem with The Daily is that they wanted $40 per year for information you can get for free on your iPad by using the web browser. I tried it for the first month for free and I was bored with it after three minutes.

This is the problem with Murdoch; he is convinced that enough people will pay for premium news content to make it profitable. They won’t. The internet has caused the entire newspaper industry to collapse yet this joker thinks that bringing the same philosophy to the digital realm will be successful.

Kesem • on Dec 3, 2012 6:57 am

What a shame! The Daily had so much potential. Although I hated the editorial section, it was the best example of the iPad’s graphical abilities. Unfortunately the form was greater than the content. It really is a lot like the newspapers in “Harry Potter.” Hopefully someone will use it’s “form” and add good content.

NotQuiteRight • on Dec 3, 2012 6:57 am

The Daily’s undoing was it’s lack of online connectivity. It was a newspaper in tablet form, nothing more, and that wasn’t worth the subscription price.
It will be done again, but hopefully better.